Carisa and I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie last Friday.  Meh.  While it was not quite the childhood-ruining, franchise-destroying crap that Episode I was, there were no terribly redeeming traits about it, either.  (Spoiler alert!)  Returning a crystal skull to a hidden temple in the jungles of South America at least sounds like a cool plot on the surface - but when you mix in nuclear testing, commentary on McCarthyism,  alien coverup conspiracies, and cute CG animals, the idea sort of gets lost in all the noise.

The Indy franchise has always had a gritty flavor, so the hyper-real CGI liberally sprinkled throughout the movie feels contrived and out of place.  What was supposed to be a breathless action sequence gets ruined by Shia Lebouf going Tarzan through a CG forest with an army of CG monkeys.  Yes, an army of CG monkeys.  Might as well be Ewoks.  I didn’t even mention the CG prairie dogs.

Cate Blanchett is underused but is still ten times more memorable than Indy’s sidekick, for whom you hardly care when he gets sucked into another dimension.  (Seriously, another dimension.  Is this still Indiana Jones?)  The batty, nearly aphasic kidnapped archaeologist adds nothing to the story.  At least it was good to see Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood again.

Oh yeah - the movie ends in a wedding.  Honestly, as I continue to type this stuff, I have to remind myself over and over that this really was an Indiana Jones movie.

I could go on and on, but I guess it really doesn’t matter.  The movie is going to make (and already has made) a jillion dollars.  People are going to go see it regardless of what the reviews are (just like I did) because of the history of the franchise.  I know that sequels don’t automatically have to suck, because there have been examples of ones done well (immediate example: Temple of Doom).  So I free up 2+ hours of my time and pay 12 bucks to go into a movie like this hoping, perhaps naively, for something that enriches an entire franchise’s mythology, adds to the magic of a fictional world.  And it hurts when, more times than not, the expectations come crashing down and the movie ends up sucking.  You wonder if the people in charge are just asleep at the wheel, if they made the mistake of taking themselves too seriously, or if they’re just turning the crank to print some money.  In any case it’s a damn shame.

Ok - lament over.  I hear Iron Man is pretty good.